Posted by: Graylon (g_dunc@hotmail.com) on Tue Sep 23 22:21:25 2008

> > Interesting post. What recognized scientific/anatomic principles do you cite to support it?
>
> Why do I need to site anything to support my claims? Just look at video of a major league swing and you might see what I'm talking about. If you've experience the feeling of hitting a homerun you'll probably understand what I'm saying.
>
> I guess the biggest scientific principle I appeal to is the principle of wave. As you know a wave is a disturbance that travels through a medium. In the case of the baseball swing the hips create the disturbance and the body is the medium in which the energy travels. For an outside pitch smaller disturbance, smaller wave. For an inside pitch larger disturbance, larger wave.
>
> For my argument against the hands generating batspeed during the backswing, it's a basic physical principle that all forces are linear. Accelerating the bat downward during the backswing does not help at all in creating forward batspeed. Yes, a force may be channelled in a multitude of different directions which will change the path that it travels through a medium but that doesn't make it non-linear. If I run across a wall and repeatedly bounce a ball off of it the path that the ball takes (as seen from directly above) would be a zig-zag. Would you call that a zig-zag force? Of course not, it's just a bunch of linear forces moving in different directions.
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> This isn't a theory on the baseball swing, I'm not trying to solve or prove anything. I'm just telling you what it is. I know I'm correct because I actual put what I say into practice, I don't just theorize I also test. I've cut down my backswing to almost nothing and have let my hips (the greatest power source) do all the work. I'm hitting the ball just as far and I'm not getting frozen by hanging breaking balls any more. It's amazing how much more of a consistent hitter I've become by cutting out all of the unnecessary movements prior to my actual swing.

Chuck,

I was reading through your post again and saw something that I would have to question.

You stated that on outside pitches that bat speed is slower then on inside pitches but you also stated that bat speed is instentaneous, that the rearward arc does nothing to help with bat speed. If your statement about inside versus outside pitches is true then wouldn't the bat arcing rearward allow it to gain more bat speed for both pitches.

IMO, with out seeing you swing, Is that what you feel as less rearward arcing is actually a tighter rearward arc, less hands arcing and more bat arcing. In other words the hands are staying more stationary in relation to the arm pit, instead of coming down and then heading forward.

Your statement about linear forces I would tend to agree with. If you were, in your back swing to let the hands follow the path of the bat, then it would be straight down. Same as when the bat started forward if the hands went forward with the bat then it would be straight forward. But if you direct the bat in a linear direction and kept the handle/hands stationary then the bat will arc around the hands.

IMO on an outside pitch there is the same amount of energy produced from the rear hip, but the energy from the rear hip is driven in a linear direction through the ball. The slight difference in bat speed is because there is not as much stretch/seperation between upper and lower body. On the inside pitch the rear hip is driven in a linear direction through the ball, which opens the hips more creating more stretch/seperation between upper and lower body. The lead hip is always moving back and out of the way.

Graylon